BMW 2002 MOT reliability

BMW 2002s passed their MOT first time 86% of the time across 86 tests in 2025. 449 are still licensed in Great Britain.

Example photo of a BMW 2002 — Photo: OlliFoolish · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

These figures come from 86 MOT tests. That's a fairly small number of cars, so they may not be typical of these cars as a whole.

First-time pass rate

86%

MOTs analysed

86

Still licensed (GB)

449

Body type

–

Pass rate by year of first registration

Older cars fail more often, so compare a car with others of the same age. Years with very few MOTs can show extreme pass rates, even 0% or 100%, so give more weight to years with more tests.

In detail:

First registered

1975 petrol

24 MOTs

Passed first time 83%. Typical mileage 37,849 (most between 24,128 and 62,196).

2005: 73% → 2006: 61% → 2007: 61% → 2008: 58% → 2009: 53% → 2010: 58% → 2011: 59% → 2012: 54% → 2013: 58% → 2014: 72% → 2015: 73% → 2016: 80% → 2017: 75% → 2018: 78% → 2019: 85% → 2020: 65% → 2021: 82% → 2022: 90% → 2023: 79% → 2024: 81% → 2025: 83%

Most common failures

Headlamp aim: too high (8.3%)
Horn: not working (4.2%)
Integral vehicle structure condition: corroded to the extent that the rigidity of the assembly is significantly reduced (4.2%)
Service brake performance: excessively binding (4.2%)
Servos: defective or ineffective (4.2%)

Where 1975 2002s fail

Lights & electrics

12.5%

Brakes

8.3%

Body, structure & corrosion

4.2%

Visibility & wipers

4.2%

Looking at a particular car?

See its own MOT history, mileage and red flags, compared with these figures. Free.

Based on 2025 initial MOT tests in DVSA's anonymised MOT dataset (cars and light vans). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Model details: Vehicle data by VehiclesDB.